Weirdness and a Milestone

I got a hit just after midnight today from a person in Kathmandu (yeah, that Kathmandu) who googled this:

Search Words: cumulative hearing and woman buttered syndrome provocation

OK, this may not be the strangest hit I’ve ever gotten but it’s damned close. This query beats all of the other strangeness that causes people to show up here, based on the sheer cryptic nature of the search words, alone. Therefore, it’s entirely natural and appropriate to wonder “What was this guy thinking?” and really mean it! Throw in this person’s rather exotic location and you get profound weirdness, from my point of view. Notice there’s no quotes, so one could come calling based upon a hit on one or more of the search words, in any combination. This is what the guy clicked through on… ten pages into his search:

· Exile in Portales: June 2007

Just to be visible in the back seat of a car with a woman offers provocation enough in many neighborhoods--Karima made the throat-cutting gesture as ...

exileinportales.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html - 343k –(सँग्रहित प्रतिलिपिहरू - यस्तै पृष्ठहरु

Thank God it wasn’t anything about buttered women. (Click the screen shot for larger, if you wish.)

―:☺:―

Milestone: 45 years ago today I reported in at the Los Angeles induction center (there’s an official term for the place, like “Military Recruit Processing Center” or some such, but I can’t remember what it is) at the ungodly hour of 0530 for about five hours of poking, prodding, probing, and blood-letting… followed by the filling out of many forms, punctuated with long periods of inactivity (and thus: boredom), culminating in mid-afternoon when me and about 150 other guys were sworn in to the armed forces of these United States. Following the swearing-in ceremony the Army, Navy, and Marine recruits were immediately loaded on to buses and set off for their basic training bases, all in California. The Air Force inductees… about 20 of us, if I recall correctly… were bussed to LAX where we waited for an evening flight to San Antonio and Lackland Air Force Base.

My parents met me at the airport and we said our good-byes. Mom was pretty composed but she did shed a few tears. My father, ever the cynic, pulled me aside shortly before I boarded the plane and said, in all seriousness…

“I only have one piece of advice for you: Stay away from airplanes.”

Don’t forget, Gentle Reader, my father was a retired USAF Lt. Col, with more than a few missions over Deutschland during The Unpleasantness of 1939 - 1945. And, not to go on in any great detail, this bon mot was probably one of the best pieces of advice he ever gave me. In a nut shell: there’s no such thing as a comfortable or hospitable flight line. Every single one of them is either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, or otherwise inhospitable to human life, in general. Let alone someone whose primary job is to crawl in, on, or around very large, bright shiny aluminum tubes, aka aircraft. Or stand around guarding them. Or arming and fueling them. But, Hey! Some people like that sort of thing. I don’t think I would have. As luck would have it I never did go near airplanes, professionally speaking, during my entire career. I digress.

Anyhoo. We arrived in San Antonio sometime around midnight… the last flight in. We were herded on to a USAF bus and driven to Lackland where we disembarked to the screams of nasty little men in fatigues, otherwise known as “Military Training Instructors,” or MTIs. The TIs formed us up in ragged ranks and called roll. I got the shock of my young life when a wiry little TI walked directly up to me, put his face about 25 millimeters from mine and shouted “Are you a QUEER, Airman Pennington?” I froze, speechless. “I REPEAT! ARE YOU A QUEER, AIRMAN?” I mumbled something, anything, by way of negative reply and thoughtfully tacked on “sir” at the end. Which brought down even more vitriol on my poor head, something to the effect of “I WORK for a living! Don’t you EVER call me ‘sir!’” Followed with “You’re from CALIFORNIA, Pennington, so I think you’re a QUEER! I’m WATCHING you, Airman! Don’t you ever forget that!”

Wow. Welcome to Lackland!

We (about 100 of us, by this point) spent the next two hours in-processing. We were then assigned to Basic Military Training (BMT) flights, handed over to our TIs, and marched (such as we could) off to our barracks, where we bedded down just before 0300. I had been up for nearly 24 hours and was beginning to question the wisdom of joining the Air Force.

I really questioned my decision when we were gently awakened two and a half hours later at 0530 by loudspeakers right outside our windows blaring Reveille and our TIs (two of ‘em) stomping down the middle of the open bay barracks, shouting - no, screaming... and that was ALL they did, seemingly - obscenities at anyone and everyone, for no good or apparent reason, other than to make noise. We were rousted, showered, shaved, dressed, formed into yet another ragged formation (all in about ten to 15 minutes... the pace was “dead run") and marched off to the mess hall, about four blocks away. And so began my first full day in the US Air Force. Breakfast was the best part of that day... let me tell ya.

And so began my career, too, 22 years of it. But Hey! It was fun. Really. All's well that ends well.

―:☺:―

Today’s Pic: An appropriate re-run. Me, following basic training… from a hometown news release Mom saved. 1963.